47 Fun Facts About Movember & Moustache

Under Movember's rules, how must every participant's face look on the first day of November?

Clean-shaven. The founders' rules, which still stand, allow a moustache only, no beard and no goatee, so each grower's changing face works as a walking billboard for men's health.

Alongside prostate cancer and testicular cancer, which third cause does Movember raise money for?

Mental health, together with suicide prevention. Around the world men die by suicide roughly twice as often as women, and in Western countries three to four times as often.

In which Australian city did the Movember Foundation begin, when 30 friends dared each other to grow moustaches?

Melbourne. The dare came out of a Sunday afternoon of beers in 2003, when the talk turned to fashions that had never come back, and that first year raised no money at all.

Movember co-founder Adam Garone calls the moustache his charity's 'hairy' version of which awareness symbol?

Ribbon. 'Our ribbon is a hairy ribbon,' Garone says: a new moustache makes people ask about it, which gets men talking about health problems they would usually keep quiet about.

Which superhero film had to digitally erase Henry Cavill's moustache because a rival studio refused to let him shave?

Justice League. Cavill had grown the moustache for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and Paramount refused to let it go mid-shoot, so it was erased by computer from Superman's reshot scenes.

Movember began in Australia, but which country's participants raised the most money for it in 2011?

Canada. The campaign had arrived only four years earlier, yet a late-November 2011 tally showed Canadians on almost 30 million Canadian dollars, with Britain and Australia under 19 million each.

What are the Moscars?

A user-submitted Movember video contest, named in a nod to the Oscars. Its 2012 rules banned fake moustaches on men, though women, children and pets could fake one, and told entrants to keep their feature films for the real thing.

Which airline painted a moustache on the nose of one of its Boeing 737s for Movember 2011?

Qantas. Its chief executive, Alan Joyce, had been treated for prostate cancer that year and said that without early detection he might have been dead within ten years.

Which Parks and Recreation star's Movember video was among the ten most-watched charity videos of 2012?

Nick Offerman, whose Ron Swanson wears one of television's best-known moustaches. His mock lesson, How to Grow a Moustache, passed 1.8 million views and finished eighth among the year's charity campaigns.

In 2013 the National Trust allowed a huge grass moustache to be added to which English chalk hill figure?

The Cerne Abbas Giant. The moustache was grown elsewhere from grass seed and carried into place, so it could come off without marking him; six years earlier a Homer Simpson had been drawn beside him to promote a film.

Which brand swapped its mascot's moustache for a QR code on its packs for Movember 2023?

Pringles. Scanning the code where Mr P's moustache used to be opened a Movember tool that coaches people through starting a difficult conversation with a friend who is struggling.

Which religious group's married men grow full beards but never moustaches, which they associate with soldiers?

The Amish. Moustaches were once the fashion of European soldiers, the reason usually given for the pacifist Amish shaving theirs, while the beard is grown at marriage and does the job of a wedding ring.

Members of which US military branch grow moustaches each March in tribute to fighter ace Robin Olds?

The Air Force. Olds wore a non-regulation 'bulletproof' moustache during the Vietnam War as what he called a gesture of defiance, his airmen copied him, and Mustache March keeps the gesture going.

Which Olympic swimming champion told Soviet rivals that his moustache made him faster by deflecting water from his mouth?

Mark Spitz. He had meant to shave before the 1972 Games but kept the moustache once rivals fixated on it, won seven golds, and later joked that every Russian swimmer turned up with one the next time.

Roughly what size is a healthy adult prostate gland?

A walnut, at least in a man's twenties. It goes on growing with age, and because it wraps around the tube that drains the bladder, an enlarged one makes it hard to pee.

In the PSA blood test offered to men, what does PSA stand for?

Prostate-specific antigen, a protein made by healthy and cancerous prostate cells alike. That is why a high reading is no diagnosis: a harmlessly enlarged or inflamed gland raises it too.

Unlike most cancers, testicular cancer is most often diagnosed at which stage of life?

Young adulthood: the average age at diagnosis is about 33, half that for cancer in general. It is also one of the most curable, with about 95 in 100 American patients alive five years later.

Which charity, founded by a testicular cancer survivor, became Movember's second American partner?

Livestrong. Lance Armstrong founded it after recovering from testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain, then stepped down from it in 2012 when his doping caught up with him.

The English word 'moustache' goes back to an ancient Greek word meaning what?

Upper lip. The Greek mystax became moustakion in medieval Greek and mostaccio in Italian before French passed it on, and English took the Italian form as well, which is why we still say mustachios.

In 1981, which video game character was given a moustache so that his designer could avoid drawing a mouth?

Mario. With so few pixels to work with, Shigeru Miyamoto could not show a mouth or its expressions, so he drew a big nose and a moustache instead, and added a cap to avoid drawing hair.

The British Army made moustaches compulsory until midway through which war?

World War I. The order of October 1916 came from General Sir Nevil Macready, who loathed his own regulation moustache and had it shaved off at once.

In 1919 the artist Marcel Duchamp drew a moustache and goatee onto a postcard of which famous painting?

Mona Lisa. The doodle was a Dada gesture of scorn for the revered art of the past, and the letters Duchamp added as its title make a rude joke about her when read aloud in French.

Which moustache style is bushy with small upward-pointing, waxed ends?

Handlebar, named for its likeness to the handlebars of a bicycle. The upward curl is trained with wax and twisting, which barbers warn takes some practice to get right.

Which moustache style, shaved to about an inch in the centre, was made famous by Chaplin and Oliver Hardy?

Toothbrush. Chaplin shared the style with Hitler and turned the likeness into satire in The Great Dictator; after the war, men almost everywhere gave it up.

Mark Twain and Friedrich Nietzsche both wore which bushy moustache style, left to hang over the mouth?

Walrus, named for the whiskers of the animal. Barbers say it takes patience rather than skill: it is an ordinary moustache left to grow until it covers the mouth.

Tom Selleck, Freddie Mercury and Richard Petty all wore which thick, wide moustache style?

Chevron. It is worn thick and long enough to cover the top edge of the mouth, and on Magnum, P.I. Selleck made it as much a trademark as the aloha shirt and the red Ferrari.

Which moustache style is a thin, closely clipped line, as worn by Errol Flynn and the film director John Waters?

Pencil, a line thin enough to look drawn on. John Waters has said he wears his as a tribute to Little Richard, the singer who had been his hero since boyhood.

Hulk Hogan wore which moustache style, which runs from the corners of the mouth down to the jawline?

Horseshoe, after the upside-down U it draws around the mouth. Barbers cut one by growing a full goatee and then shaving away the chin and cheeks.

Which screen villain was created by the English novelist Sax Rohmer?

Fu Manchu. The drooping moustache he wears in the film versions was named after him, and the character came to personify the 'yellow peril', the Western fear of rising Asian power.

Salvador Dalí wore his flamboyant upturned moustache in the manner of which 17th-century painter?

Diego Velázquez. When Dalí's body was exhumed in 2017 for a paternity test, the embalmer found the moustache intact, its tips still at ten past ten, and the test then disproved the claim.

Which comedian's trademark moustache was nothing but a stripe of greasepaint in his films?

Groucho Marx. He painted on the eyebrows too, grew a real moustache only for his television quiz show, and the whole look lives on in novelty 'Groucho glasses' with nose and brows attached.

Ambrose Burnside, whose moustache ran into the side whiskers that were named after him, was what?

A Union general in the American Civil War. His whiskers were first known as 'burnsides', and within a few years Americans had swapped the two halves round to make the word 'sideburns'.

Which Russian ruler taxed beards in an effort to make his subjects look more like western Europeans?

Peter the Great. Back from a tour of western Europe, he ordered his courtiers to cut off their beards and is said to have taken a razor to some himself; men who paid the tax carried a token as proof.

Which Oakland A's pitcher grew his famous curled moustache in 1972 to collect owner Charlie Finley's $300 bonus?

Rollie Fingers. Offered a late-career contract by the Cincinnati Reds on condition that he shave, he is said to have told them to shave owner Marge Schott's Saint Bernard first, and he retired instead.

Which Hollywood star said he grew a moustache so people would stop saying he looked like Marlon Brando?

Burt Reynolds. The likeness was strong enough for a 1963 Twilight Zone episode to cast him as a parody of Brando, who, by Reynolds's own account, did not like him at all.

Which Calgary Flames legend was known across hockey for his bushy red moustache?

Lanny McDonald. Razor companies offered him money to shave it off and he refused every one, and he ended his career in 1989 by lifting the Stanley Cup in his final season.

By his own account, why did Charlie Chaplin add a small moustache to the Tramp's costume?

To look older. Chaplin was 24 and reasoned that a moustache would add age without hiding his expression; he chose the rest of the outfit, baggy trousers with a tight coat, to be a contradiction.

Which war, from which British soldiers returned heavily bearded, helped set the Victorian fashion for whiskers?

The Crimean War. Beards had been banned in the British Army, but freezing winters and a shortage of shaving soap forced a change, and the returning troops made whiskers the mark of a hero.

Movember's founders say they were inspired by what the women around them were doing to fight which disease?

Breast cancer. Co-founder Adam Garone says he went looking for a men's equivalent, found that prostate cancer struck on a similar scale with no campaign of its own, and gave the moustache a cause.

In ALEC, the four-step guide Movember teaches for talking to a struggling friend, what does the last letter, C, stand for?

Check in. The steps are ask, listen, encourage action and check in, and the last means following up with a call later to show you care and see whether things have improved.

Which ride-hailing company's drivers once strapped a giant fuzzy pink moustache to the front of their cars?

Lyft. The company swapped them in 2015 for a small glowing version on the dashboard, admitting that some riders did not want to pull up to a business meeting behind a giant moustache.

How did Australia's prostate cancer charity respond when Movember's founders first offered to raise money for it?

Declined to take part: its chief executive called the charity too conservative for a moustache campaign, though it would gladly take any money raised. That year's cheque was the largest donation it had ever received.

Which was the first country outside Australia to join the Movember campaign?

New Zealand. The campaign crossed to the northern hemisphere only after would-be growers in Britain and North America began emailing the founders to ask for a Movember of their own.

Which comic-book legend, a Movember 'Mo Mentor' in 2012, helped to judge that year's Moscars?

Stan Lee. Then 89, he told the charity that he wore a moustache and no beard because his wife preferred it, and she was the boss.

Kenneth Branagh wore an enormous, sweeping moustache in three films to play which fictional detective?

Hercule Poirot. Agatha Christie made her tidy little detective a Belgian because refugees from Belgium were living in her home town of Torquay when she invented him.

Which footwear brand made limited-edition Movember shoes with moustaches embroidered on the sides?

TOMS. There is no Tom: the name is short for Tomorrow's Shoes, which would not fit on the label, and the brand was built on giving a pair to a child in need for every pair it sold.

Until 2025, which baseball team allowed its players a moustache but banned every other kind of facial hair?

New York Yankees. Owner George Steinbrenner brought in the rule in the 1970s, and his son relaxed it to allow neat beards, partly for fear that a star would one day refuse to sign because of it.